Major League Soccer's Most Valuable Teams 2015

Two years ago, David Villa, Kaka, Steven Gerard and Frank Lampard were playing for some of the most valuable soccer teams around the world. Today, all four call America's Major League Soccer home, with each making well over $5 million annually. What’s even more impressive for the domestic soccer league is that, while even just a few years ago that sort of list would constitute the entirety of its star power, those four are now just a small handful of the league’s superstar names.

That influx of talent has been made possible by team owners willing to spend, and spend big. Those investments, which have ranged from mere player salaries to massive soccer stadiums, have led to rising attendance, TV viewership and, most importantly, revenue. The average team is now worth $157 million, up 52% from when we last looked at the league two years ago.

We painted a rosy picture in those 2013 valuations, in which the average team was worth $103 million, nearly triple what the typical MLS team was worth five years previously. Yet detractors could still point to some disconcerting signs. The league was on a set of TV deals with ESPN, NBC and Univision that paid just $30 million per year on average. And in 2014 MLS bought back and eventually folded Chivas USA, marking the first time an MLS franchise had gone under in more than a decade.

Yet both potential dilemmas were quickly overcome. Even our bullish predictions that then-ongoing TV contract negotiations would result in the league's rights fee more than doubling came up short: The league is now in the first season of its new eight-year deals with Fox, ESPN and Univision, which pay a combined $90 million per year on average, triple the old payout.

And though Chivas fell by the wayside, 2015 is the inaugural season for both NYCFC and Orlando City SC, which have immediately become two of MLS's most popular franchises. More new teams are on the way, with Atlanta, Minnesota and a replacement team in Los Angeles set to join the ranks. Those five will collectively inject some $450 million into the league in expansion fees, which should go a long way toward alleviating the teams' league-level expenses. David Beckham's planned Miami franchise is expected to round out the league at 24 teams, and in April commissioner Don Garber said that further expansion is not a question of if, but rather when.

Neither of the league's two most recent additions is included in this year's list because our franchise valuations rely on 2014 financial data, but it's hard to imagine Orlando and NYCFC getting off to a better start. They rank second and third in average home game attendance, with only the Seattle Sounders - Major League Soccer's most valuable team at $245 million - topping them. New York City's newest team wasted no time in setting a record for single-game in-stadium merchandise sales, while the Lions have already sold out the entirety of their 2016 season ticket inventory.

And the two teams are responsible for bringing in some of the league's biggest names. NYCFC is now home to the trio of David Villa, Frank Lampard and Andrea Pirlo, while Orlando boasts Kaka, owner of the league's highest base salary ($6.7 million).

Those superstar names hint at the fact that MLS has seriously begun to expand its ranks of top-tier players. According to the MLS Players Union, in 2015 no fewer than 20 players have a base salary of at least $1 million. That's more than double the number of players who were making seven-figure salaries just two years ago, and it's a list that doesn't include Didier Drogba, who signed with Montreal during the summer transfer window on a salary reported to be north of $2 million.

This season also saw the creation of Targeted Allocation Money, a new system through which the league is facilitating the development of competitive depth. Unlike the designated player rule, which allows team ownership to spend well above the league's salary cap limits to bring in a select few superstars, this new option has the express purpose of helping teams sign the sort of mid-tier players who fill not only strategic on-field roles, but also what has long been a wage gap in team payrolls. Teams have already taken advantage of the additional spending, and during the recently closed summer transfer window 34 players joined MLS rosters.

Improving the quality of play is a critical way to expand the fan base, particularly as MLS hopes to go up against the world's top soccer leagues. And those fans are ultimately the core driver behind almost every league revenue stream, from ticket and merchandise sales to sponsorship and TV deals. Thankfully for MLS, most indicators are pointing strongly in the right direction this season.

Two years ago the league was averaging some 18,600 fans per game, good for a total league-wide attendance of 6 million fans that season. Through the end of July 2015, MLS teams are averaging over 21,100 fans per home game, ranking the league well ahead of the NBA (17,800 fans per game) and NHL (17,500). That figure, along with an increase in the number of teams, also puts MLS on pace for a total attendance of 7.2 million, a 20% increase from 2013.

Team

Value ($M)

Revenue ($M)

Operating Income ($M)1

Seattle Sounders

245

50

10

LA Galaxy

240

44

4

Houston Dynamo

200

26

5

Portland Timbers

185

35

4

Toronto FC

175

32

-7

Sporting Kansas City

165

29

4

Chicago Fire

160

21

-6

New England Revolution

158

25

7

FC Dallas

148

25

-3

San Jose Earthquakes

146

13

-1

Philadelphia Union

145

25

2

New York Red Bulls

144

22

-9

D.C. United

140

21

-1

Montreal Impact

128

22

-3

Vancouver Whitecaps

125

21

-6

Columbus Crew

112

18

-4

Real Salt Lake

108

17

1

Colorado Rapids

105

15

-3

FORBES estimates; revenue and operating income is for 2014 season 1 Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization

And not only is attendance still on the rise, but the league is increasingly able to capitalize on its local markets as more teams move into soccer-specific venues they control; 16 of the league's 20 teams are slated to be in a stadium purpose-built for soccer within the next three years. This season the San Jose Earthquakes, now worth $146 million, jumped from their longtime home at Santa Clara's Buck Shaw Stadium to the team-owned Avaya Stadium; per-game attendance is up 75% so far this season. D.C. United ($140 million) has secured stadium plans of its own, and should be able to move out of 54-year-old RFK Stadium by the 2018 season. Both teams are now worth nearly twice as much as they were two years ago.

Another key concern facing the league has been television viewership. Though attendance numbers suggest popularity in local team markets, national interest hasn't always appeared strong as TV ratings have lagged behind even the WNBA. But this year has shown signs of improvement, and it's no small bonus that the league's new round of TV deals also grants MLS its first ever fixed broadcast schedule, with ESPN and Fox airing Sunday doubleheaders while Univision has a weekly Friday game.

The three games aired on ESPN's flagship network thus far have averaged 382,000 viewers, up 40% from comparable games in 2013, when the channel averaged 271,000 viewers per MLS broadcast. Viewership of games on Univision's UniMas is up 13% from 2014, while the shift from NBC to Fox has also resulted in a serious upswing: Games on Fox Sports 1 are averaging 232,000 viewers this season, up a staggering 65% from the 141,000-viewer audience that a typical game on NBCSN drew last season.

What's more, the league's broadcast partners also simulcast their games on Spanish broadcast channels, helping to boost those viewership numbers. The LA Galaxy's recent 3-1 win over Seattle was the season's most-watched match, drawing a TV audience of 549,000 viewers on ESPN - and another 183,000 on ESPN Deportes.

Members of the Emerald City Supporters and other fans wave flags and cheer before an MLS soccer match between the Seattle Sounders and Orlando City, Sunday, Aug. 16, 2015, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

MLS still isn’t consistently posting Big Four numbers - the NHL averaged nearly 350,000 viewers per game on NBCSN last season - but the recent surge is an important step up from where the league was just a few seasons ago.

There are still some causes for concern, of course. The league and its teams continue to lose money, and the relief provided by recent expansion fees is hardly permanent, even if the league plans to add more teams in the future. Not to mention that team spending isn't going to slow down anytime soon, particularly as teams continue to invest in academies and player development programs, the fastest-growing expense line for most franchises. And gaining market share within the soccer community remains a stiff competition, with wealthy leagues like the English Premier League and Germany's Bundesliga expanding their reach on MLS's home soil.

Yet even though Major League Soccer’s top franchises still have a sizable leap to make before they are competing with the sport's most valuable teams, there's no denying that the gap is closing.